Monsoon

When I cried--
the few times that I did--
I saved the tears in a jar.
They turned yellow,
but I told you
that every drop was needed.

When you cried--
which was all too often--
you let them dry off your face,
like slowly-melting diamonds.
You said if enough tears evaporated,
they might make a cloud,
something neither you nor I
had ever seen.

There was salt on your face,
when you looked so frail
that you were about to break.
You smiled up at me,
your lips splitting,
and a final drop of water,
the only left in your body,
emerged from your eye.

I was filled with a cloud
that produced no rain,
just lightning and thunder.
And I thundered and lightninged,

I swore upon all the salt in my body,
until the it settled at the bottom,
and the floods rose out of me,
falling like twin rivers.
But I didn't catch the tears.
Who would I be saving them for?

I poured the old yellowing jar
onto your sandy grave,
but even that did not moisten your lips.

You were right.
If I had let my tears out, maybe it would have come sooner.
A dark cloud rolled onto the sky above us.
I thought death had come to take me too.
I did not know the meaning of this beastly angel.
Until it cried.
And wetted your face
that had so often been as wet
as the rain that had never come
till now.